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Earlier this week I posted an article entitled 2014 Marketing Predictions With A Twist. It was my offbeat attempt at combining a staple of this time of the year - marketing forecasts, with pop culture. In the piece are some predictions for 2014 from all walks of the marketing and advertising world including one from yours truly.

My prediction, in which I called upon the immortal Inigo Montoya for inspiration, speaks to the fact that marketers and advertisers need to go back to the beginning and put customers front and center - and leave them there.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, if I were to make a prediction specifically for those on the B2B marketing side of the aisle I may have chosen a different pop culture reference, say something along the lines of the song Human Touch by Bruce Springsteen.

Why?

Well perhaps this will explain why. It's from something I wrote back 2012, nearly a year and half ago.

***

True story…

I was working at an ad agency and was in an initial client meeting with a man that sold cleaning equipment to businesses. He was lamenting that his business was slow and I asked him what kind of advertising/marketing he had done in the past.

He told me he had not done much. Imagine that, no business and no advertising/marketing. Go figure.

Anyway, we ended up getting the account and the first thing he wanted to create was a sales letter, something to send out to prospects. Me being a writer and all scribed such a letter, informing his prospects of all the fabulousness that awaits them if they patronize this particular company.

I emailed the initial draft of the letter to the client for review and his response back to me was something I have never, ever forgotten.

“Change the copy. It’s too personal. We are a B2B company, not a B2C.”

My email back to the client went something like this…“Thank you for your feedback. I understand completely you are a B2B company, however please remember that this letter is going to a person, meaning there’s a real, live person on the other end of the line, hence my ‘personal’ tone in the letter.”